A new Sondheim biography reveals some shockers — and the dark side of genius

Stephen Sondheim’s decease successful 2021, astatine 91, was a gut punch to philharmonic theatre fans. Showered with honors and tributes, helium had begun to look eternal, a taste constant. Even his gnarliest shows enjoyed palmy revivals — much acclaimed, and much profitable, than their archetypal productions. His power and mentorship shaped a caller procreation of theatrical composers that included Adam Guettel (“The Light successful the Piazza”), Jason Robert Brown (“Parade”), Jeanine Tesori (“Fun Home”), Jonathan Larson (“Rent”) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (“Hamilton”).

The astir secular of Jews, Sondheim is present the taxable of a biography successful Yale University Press’ fantabulous Jewish Lives series. Its author, Daniel Okrent, was the New York Times’ archetypal nationalist exertion and has written acclaimed books connected topics specified arsenic migration and Prohibition.

Okrent ne'er met Sondheim, helium tells us, but helium had immoderate adjacent misses: He sat adjacent the composer successful the theatre connected much than 1 juncture and was adjacent mistaken for him. For “Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy,” Okrent spent 3 years absorbing the literature, interviewing collaborators and friends, and probing the archives. He cites a peculiar indebtedness to biographer Meryle Secrest’s extended taped interviews, from the mid-1990s, with Sondheim and others.

The resulting measurement is simply a brisk, engaging work that avoids hagiography. Okrent highlights the affectional frailties that coexisted with the brilliance and generosity. He seeks to liberate Sondheim’s estimation from the encrustation of story and to demystify his relationships, portion offering a succinct investigation of his achievements. That’s a gangly bid for a compact book, particularly fixed its subject’s long, analyzable life. Okrent’s failings are, unsurprisingly, chiefly those of omission.

The wide outlines of Sondheim’s communicative are good known. The precocious lone kid of 2 acrimoniously divorced parents, helium benefited from the mentorship of his Bucks County, Pa., neighbor, Oscar Hammerstein II. Sondheim enjoyed aboriginal success, successful the precocious 1950s, arsenic the lyricist for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” but chafed astatine the limitations of the role. He vastly preferred penning music.

With a assortment of collaborators, including Hal Prince, George Furth, John Weidman, Hugh Wheeler and James Lapine, helium went connected to forge a distinctive bequest arsenic some a composer and lyricist. His shows, including “Company,” “Follies,” “A Little Night Music,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Into the Woods,” mined the acheronian and complexities of quality relationships, deployed divers forms of storytelling, and expanded the possibilities of the Broadway musical.

Okrent’s subtitle, “Art Isn’t Easy,” is simply a lyric from Sondheim’s “Sunday successful the Park with George.” The 1984 musical, inspired by the creator Georges Seurat’s 1886 pointillist masterpiece “A Sunday Afternoon connected the Island of La Grande Jatte,” explored the rigors and rewards of the creator process.

There are immoderate surprises here. While Sondheim spoke astir utilizing intoxicant arsenic a originative lubricant, Okrent goes further. Quoting Lapine and others, helium concludes that Sondheim was an unrepentant alcoholic, arsenic good arsenic a prolific idiosyncratic of marijuana and cocaine. He kept drinking, Okrent says, adjacent aft astatine slightest 2 bosom attacks.

For years, Sondheim dated men casually, without commitment. Only precocious successful beingness did helium find 2 superior loves, the songwriter Peter Jones and past the shaper Jeff Romley, 50 years his junior, whom helium married. That national brought him contentment, Okrent says.

Okrent besides takes earnestly Sondheim’s “emotionally intimate” relationships with women. Among them were Mary Rodgers, girl of composer Richard Rodgers, who chronicled her devotion successful the memoir “Shy;” the histrion Lee Remick, whom Okrent says Sondheim genuinely loved; and the producer-director Hal Prince’s wife, Judy, an creator muse with whom helium whitethorn person talked daily. Her disinclination (along with Romley’s) to cooperate with biographers leaves an unfortunate spread successful the record.

One of the myths Okrent tackles involves Sondheim’s expected rupture with Judy’s husband, whose imaginativeness had helped substance shows specified arsenic “Company,” “Follies” and “A Little Night Music.” After the spectacular failure, successful 1981, of “Merrily We Roll Along,” Sondheim turned to caller collaborators. But, according to Okrent, the relationship remained mostly intact. (A final, years-long collaboration with Prince, connected the philharmonic “Bounce” — aboriginal called “Road Show” — ne'er made it to Broadway.)

Okrent portrays Sondheim arsenic witty and endearing, but besides poorly groomed, remote, caustic, speedy to choler — and, mostly, speedy to forgive. One objection was the lawsuit of the prickly Arthur Laurents (librettist for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy”), a longtime person and sometime foe whose petition for a deathbed sojourn Sondheim spurned. By contrast, Sondheim was consistently accessible and encouraging to younger composers and lyricists adjacent arsenic his ain creator output sputtered.

One of his astir embattled relationships was with his mother, known arsenic Foxy. She famously bemoaned his commencement successful a cruel letter, which Okrent suggests Sondheim whitethorn person misquoted. But it was done her machinations that helium met Hammerstein, a indebtedness helium repaid by supporting her financially done overmuch of her life.

The biography’s brevity is needfully limiting. While Okrent mentions that the caller Tony Award-winning Broadway revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” fetched precocious summons prices, helium doesn’t item the reasons for its success. (Director Maria Friedman re-envisioned the amusement arsenic a representation play, and formed the supremely likable Jonathan Groff arsenic the corrupt composer Franklin Shepard, ruefully reflecting connected his past.)

Okrent touches connected Sondheim’s faltering efforts to implicit his last musical, with David Ives, “Here We Are.” But helium says thing astir its posthumous Off Broadway production, successful 2023, which played to packed houses and mixed reviews — not rather the valedictory Sondheim would person wanted.

In Sondheim’s assemblage of work, Okrent searches for the autobiographical resonances that Sondheim himself mostly disdained. He likens the composer to some the emotionally disengaged protagonist, Bobby, of “Company,” who struggles with ambivalence, and (more surprisingly) the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd, whose demons drove him to murder. Sondheim’s were alternatively tamed by his art, Okrent suggests, which shaped his “textured, contradictory, troubling, and gratifying life.”

Klein is simply a Philadelphia-based taste professional and reporter.